Watch This Robot Bee Become a Submarine

Harvard University's been working on this awesome robot bee since at least 2012. The current incarnation of RoboBee still needs to be wired to an external power source and it can't control itself on its own, but it has one cool new feature: It can swim like a tiny little submarine.

RoboBee doesn't actually need any changes to its construction to swim. It's so small, however, that the water's surface tension can actually prevent it from moving under the water. The engineers solved this by using a compound on the wings that lowers the surface tension. Think of it like greasing up the wings.

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Up until this point, the RoboBee's intended purpose has been to fly around while flapping its little insect-like wings. Swimming was not part of the original design, but mechanically, swimming really isn't all that different from flying. To fly, the bot beats its wings at 120 Hz. To swim, it does so at 9 Hz. Other than that, it's just about the same, all the way down to the way operators control it. A motion capture system keeps an eye on the little robot, sending commands to it so that the critter knows what to do next.

Going back into the air once RoboBee is all wet seems to be much harder, but then again, nobody said making a combination bee-submarine would be easy.